


Building a Shepard

by teaseawrites



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Happy families only they're not family and it's a tragic mess, Kaidan is romanced in ME1 and then the rest is Shakarian madness, Ruthless (Mass Effect), Spacer (Mass Effect), Vanguard (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-15 11:48:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21252905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaseawrites/pseuds/teaseawrites
Summary: Glimpses into Shepard's life before, during and after the war.





	1. February 10, 2167

“Shoot straight, Noma.”

“I’m trying, Dad,” Noma mutters, squinting through the scope of the sniper rifle. It’s too heavy and the targets move too fast. She can’t help but think that if she just managed to get _in front_ of the holograms, right up close, then she’d be able to get them far more easily. “They keep _moving_.”

“People do that,” Johann calls over the sound of gunfire, aiming his own rifle expertly from the spot he’s secured on one of the upper levels of the arena, covered by a seemingly endless stack of crates. The perfect spot for a sniper. “Especially turians. They’re fast--got the agility of a leopard! You gotta make sure you’re up to the task.”

She lets out a short huff of air as she leans back the tiniest bit, peeking at her dad. He’s far too distracted to notice her watchful gaze, but even at this angle, she’s able to marvel at just how nimble he is. He squeezes his finger on the trigger with a steady hand and picks off his targets without so much as a blink of an eye. _One, two, three._ Noma has lost count of how many kills he has at this point.

If he let her use the swords, or maybe even the assault rifles, it would be a different story. Noma doesn’t_ want_ to be a sniper; she likes the cloaks they get, sometimes wishes she could be that invisible, but she doesn’t have the patience or the steadiness of a sniper. No--whenever she plays with her friends, kids of the other military parents, she’s always sneaking up on people and shooting them down. It’s purely tag, of course. But it’s violent. They’re her crew and they’ve mutinied. _Bang, bang, you’re dead._

“Why do we have to use the sniper rifles all the time?” Noma exclaims over the noise, her attention drawn back to the holographic turians around them. She fires and barely clips one in the arm before she shoots another in the chest. She allows herself a moment of satisfaction as the holograph falls down, her plump lips quirking upwards at the sight.

“You know why,” Johann responds, and Noma can hear a slither of annoyance in his tone even despite the gunfire around them. “I’ve told you the story time and time before.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Noma mumbles. A mix of boredom and irritation seeps into her very core as she fires the trigger once more. “I know.”

The story goes like this: during the First Contact War, her father and his squad were sent to rescue human prisoners from a turian encampment. Whatever the report had said in regards to enemy numbers, it had been wrong. The turians were aware of the Alliance’s plans for ambush and had backup closeby. Her father’s squad had barely freed the prisoners before the full force of the attack was upon them, and Johann had only a sniper rifle to defend his injured squad with._ Against all odds,_ he says, _we made it._ Again. And again. He even has the rifle framed on the wall of their quarters to prove it.

_The First Contact War lasted three months,_ Noma wants to say. _Get over it._

She doesn’t, of course, for fear of her father’s wrath. She keeps her mouth shut and grits her teeth as she pulls on the trigger again and eventually, she finds her boredom shifting from a strange mix of irritation and satisfaction. _One, two, bang! Dead._ Still, by the time all the targets are shot and the rounds her father paid for with his credit chit is up, Noma’s occasional headshot doesn’t beat her father’s almost certain endless count of them.

“You did good, kid,” Johann says, his fingers reaching to muss up Noma’s hair as he passes her. Noma ducks, an attempt to avoid the tragedy that is her father messing up her dark hair, but he still manages to do it anyway. She makes a noise of annoyance.

“Yeah, right,” she mutters, smoothing back the strands that have come loose from her ponytail. “I hate sniper rifles.”

“You’ll learn with time,” Johann says dismissively. He nods to the human clerk as they leave the arena, and she gives him a small wave in response. “And hate is a strong word.”

Noma side-eyes him grumpily. "You use it all the time about the turians."

“Yes,” Johann answers, “and I have my reasons.”

Noma grits her teeth. In her experience, turians aren’t bad at all–-in fact, there are plenty of turians in her classes that seem just fine. She likes the way they think most of all, and especially how easy it is to prank them. _It says gullible on the ceiling,_ Noma snickers when the teacher isn’t looking, marvelling at the way the little turian boy sitting next to her squints upwards as if he’s missing something. Alien anatomy classes are her favourite; it’s when the people in them are the most diverse. There are far more aliens on this station than there was on Arcturus, and Noma loves it.

Eventually, the two of them find themselves in a rackety old shuttle that makes a strange buzzing noise as it flies, but Noma is relieved to be on her way home. If things were different, Noma’s sure she’d never want to leave the arena; she’d spend all her creds there only to stay all day, dreaming about the crew and ship she’d one day have. With her mother stationed somewhere in the Attican Traverse, her fantasies have been severely lacking. Her mom always provides the best input for their make-believe sessions. Johann, however, isn’t interested in make-believe as much as he is teaching her the ‘real, hard lessons of life’.

Noma can hardly stop the question from slipping from her lips as she asks, “Next round, can I choose the targets?”

Her father raises a brow. “Now, why would you want to do that?”

Noma shifts uncomfortably. She goes to shrug and then remembers that it’s one of the things her father hates, and so she moulds it onto a casual stretch, a roll of her shoulders. It’s all a delay: she shouldn’t have asked. She shouldn’t have brought it up. Her father has always been one to overreact, to make anything he disagrees with into a big, boundless blast of an argument…

“Noma,” Johann says quietly, almost a warning. “Have you been playing with the turian kids again?”

Noma tenses, looking away. “We’re in the same classes, dad–-”

Johann's eyes widen. "So you _have._" He takes a moment to heave a deep inhale, as if to muster up some patience or prevent him from exploding. Perhaps both. His fist wraps around the handle of the shuttle tightly as he says, his voice low, “I thought I taught you better than that. What do I always say?”

She sighs. “They’re sneaky, they’re fast, and they’ll kick you in the ass.”

Johann nods. “Good. You’d better remember that, kid. You can’t always rely on other people to watch your six; all you got at the end of the day is yourself.”

_I’ll have more than that one day,_ Noma thinks. Her arms fold as she slumps in her seat._ Just you wait and see._


	2. August 14, 2168

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her father's death marks a pivotal point in Noma's life and sets her up for future events to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for mention of drugs.

_ No, no, no. _

_ Please, not now,  _ Noma thinks, her eyes clenching shut as her fists do the same. She is trying desperately to stop the blue glow that sparks at her fists, to hide it, wants it to  _ stop  _ before anyone sees.  _ Not ever, but not now, please not now… _

There are people all around her, and yet none of them bother to glance in her direction. Do they even know who she is? She blends in, just another human in blue, as people mill quietly and politely about the room. She’s dressed in formal Alliance clothes; ridiculous, really, since she’s not even  _ in  _ the Alliance, but her mother had insisted. _ Your father would want this,  _ her mother sniffs, her eyes red and puffy.  _ Please wear it.  _ Noma won’t fight her on it, too sad and weary to bother.

She supposes she should find a sense of irony in the fact that the first signs of biotics are showing at her father’s funeral. Why? Because she  _ knows  _ he’s the reason her hands are now glowing blue. She  _ knows  _ he hates biotics as much as he hates turians. She  _ knows  _ she was exposed to eezo on that last run he had her do. She  _ knows  _ her mother would flip if she found out, knows that she can’t tell Hannah the truth, knows that her father was endangering her when he died, knows that her mother almost lost  _ two  _ members of her family rather than one—

And yet her only priority is hiding. Noma has never felt an inkling of a self-preservation instinct before, but now, it hits her at full force. She races towards the bathroom with her hands stuffed in her pockets, vaguely aware of the sound of her name being called from somewhere across the room, but by the time she slams the cubicle door behind her with a gasp, all she manages to do is slump against the wall in a desperate attempt to  _ breathe. _

It’s funny—now that her father has gone, the man who she had idolised like a hero, it’s like a spell has lifted. It’s like she sees clearer, somehow. 

Now, the world is painted in red.

_ She  _ paints  _ her _ world in red over the next few years, all snapping teeth and daggered glares _ .  _ Somehow, despite the fire that seems to rage within her at all times, she manages to keep her biotics a secret from her mother. She spends as little time at home as possible in order to hide her new powers from her, too ashamed, too afraid of feeling like even more of a burden on her workaholic of a mother’s shoulders. Sometimes, Noma wonders if Hannah Shepard even wanted a family, and oftentimes the answer that the voice in Noma’s head comes back with is  _ no. _

She discovers illegal drugs that help to suppress her biotics. She meddles with the wrong crowd. She finds a home in people she  _ thinks  _ are friends but, in truth, are anything but: friends don’t convince you to try hard drugs to help stomp out your biotics. Friends don’t leave you on your own when you need them the most. Friends don’t incriminate you. Friends don’t allow your first time to take place in a bathroom stall with a guy you barely know. 

She’ll learn all this later down the line, at least. But what other role model does she have in the present? At the end of his life, her father had become so overwhelmed by his hatred of turians that the  _ second  _ he’d heard of a potential partnership between them and humans, some kind of big tech project, he’d used his daughter to try to sabotage their plans. Illegal spacewalks. Stealing important technical components. Sabotaging systems. She’d known it wasn’t right, had told her father how  _ wrong  _ it felt, but he’d never listened.

“Sometimes, when you do good things, they don’t always feel like the right choice,” Johann had reassured her once, cradling her close to his chest as he stroked back her hair. It was nice. Soothing. Noma valued those moments more than anything. “This is for the good of the galaxy, Noma. Someday you’ll understand that.”

The good of the galaxy hasn’t helped her yet. The good of the galaxy exposed her to element zero and gave her biotics. The good of the galaxy got her dad spaced.

The fucking galaxy certainly doesn’t do anything to help her when, later down the line, her mother finds her stash of Omega under her bed. 

Hannah is sitting at the kitchen table when Noma arrives back at their too-small home. It’s standard shitty Alliance family housing, the kind of thing Noma used to love and now hates. She knows she’s in trouble because her mother is  _ never  _ in the kitchen, never cooks; the most Noma has ever seen her mother make is a ready-meal, heated up in the microwave, and nothing more. No, Noma knows she’s in trouble as soon as Hannah stands at the sight of her daughter, a soldier standing to attention.

“What is  _ this _ ?” Hannah Shepard hisses, fury in her typically sweet green eyes. She holds up a small, see-through bag, its contents orange and grainy. Noma recognises it. It’s hers.

“I don’t know,” Noma lies, instantly defensive.

There's no way to explain this, not in a way that her mother would understand. How could she? The drug Hannah holds between her forefinger in thumb is _Omega, _named after the backwaters that it comes from, and while it helps Noma to stop _feeling, _it also helps her to numb her biotic slips. When she's on it, she barely ever loses control like she does without it. The only reason she's come home is to get her last stash. It's been too dry to get any lately; there are rumours that some kind of big company has ceased production of it.

When was her last dose again?

“Don’t give me that, Noma," Hannah hisses bitterly, "I know it’s yours. How long has this been going on for? Is this—is this why you’re never home?”

_Hold your breath_, Noma thinks. _Don't lose your temper. Count to three. One, two—_

Almost.

"What excuse do _you _have, Mom?" Noma hisses, her fists clenching. "Why are _you_ never home?"

Hannah’s lips part in shock. “I am providing for this  _ family,  _ Noma, and you are_ not_ going to change the subj—”

“We're not a family, Mom, not since Dad died," Noma quips. She can feel rage bubbling within her chest; she wants it gone, gone, gone, but it's always there, always, without the drugs. "Hell, you were never even around then, so don’t pretend you’re doing this for anyone but yourself.”

Hannah blinks, and she takes a step back like she’s been shot. “Is this what this is about? Me not being here?”

_ You're slipping, _ Noma thinks. _Control yourself. _She closes her eyes, her fists tightening. _Not now, not now, not now... _

"No," Noma manages to growl in response.

She can hear her mother slip around the table and cross over to her, and she instantly tenses at the thought of anybody touching her, at the thought of her mother feeling the current building over her skin. It's not visible yet, but she knows what follows; the static, the soft blue turning electric, the violence that follows... 

"Mom," Noma says in warning, her eyes clenching tighter, "Don't—"

"Please, Noma," Hannah begs. She's somewhere in front of her, but Noma won't dare open her eyes to see where. She has to find control somewhere; the sight of her mother won't help it. "I just want to help you. There are people you can talk to—"

"You can't help me."

"You don't know that," Hannah says, impossibly soft. It's a stark contrast to Noma's own presence in the room. _She cares, I know she does, she cares she cares she cares but it's not enough—_

Hannah steps forward, gently touches Noma's arm, and all hell breaks loose.

Her eyes fly open just before it happens, just in time for Noma to see everything play out in slow motion.  _It’s too late,_ Noma realises, i_t’s too _ _ late. _ She can feel the tingling in her palms, the guilt building in her gut, the static building in her hair.  She can see the blue out of the corner of her eye, can see it building in her clenched fists; she can feel it as it extends all the way up her arms, her legs, until it builds and builds and builds until it’s too much, oh god it’s too much, she needs another dose—

Her biotics release in a violent wave of power which throws her mother backwards like a rag doll. Hannah Shepard's back hits the wall with a loud _thud, _and Noma can't tell whether the crack that follows is the sound of her mother's bones or the sound of her own heart breaking in two.

"Mom," Noma keens, glued to the spot. 

She is trembling, her body sending out biotic aftershock after biotic aftershock, and she has never wanted to disappear more.  Hannah's eyes open, terror and confusion within, and she blinks as her vision focuses before her gaze travels slowly back to her daughter. 

Hannah Shepard looks at her daughter like she's a stranger, and Noma can't tell whether her mother surviving such an accident is a blessing or a curse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a small warmup before I started writing some other things. Not sure if I like it but I wanted to post it anyway. Somehow, it's always more difficult writing from my Shep's POV than it is writing Garrus.
> 
> If you enjoyed, kudos and comments are always appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! Thanks so much for taking a minute to click on my fic. After posting Not Without Me, I was inspired by some comments to provide a glimpse into my Shepard's important experiences/things which make her the person she is. This will be a series! Hope you enjoy and if you do, don't forget to let me know. Kudos is always appreciated <3


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